Cockfighter

by Cockfighter (retail) (epub)

  Ed Middleton examined both cocks, returned them to us, and told us to get ready.

  “I’ve been ready!” Jack said.

  I bobbed my head, and Ed said, “Bill ‘em.”

  We billed the cocks on the center score.

  “That’s enough,” Ed said, when he saw how quickly the combativeness of both cocks was aroused. “Pass ‘em once and get ready.”

  Holding our gamecocks at arm’s length, we passed them in the air with a circling movement and retreated to our respective eight-foot scores.

  “Pit!”

  As usual, by watching the referee’s lips, I let Icky go first, beating Burke off the score. I needed the split second. The O’Neal Red, with its dark red comb, and fresh from a country walk, was faster than Icky. Despite his superb condition, the days and nights in a narrow coop walk had slowed my Blue chicken down. Icky missed with both spurs as Little David side-stepped, and my cock wound up on his back with a spur in his chest.

  “Handle!”

  The second I disengaged the spur from Icky’s breast, I retreated to my side of the pit and examined the wound. It wasn’t fatal. Using the cellulose sponge and pan of clean water furnished by the pit, I wiped away the flowing blood and pressed my thumb against the hole to stop the bleeding until the order came to get ready.

  “Pit!”

  Little David was overconfident and Icky was vigilant. The Red tried three aerial attacks and failed to get above my pit-wise Blue. With mutual respect, they circled in tight patterns, heads low above the floor, hackles raised, glaring at each other with bright, angry eyes. Icky tried a tricky rushing feint that worked. As Little David wheeled and dodged instead of sidestepping, Icky walked up his spine like a lineman climbing a telephone pole. There was an audible thump as Icky struck a gaff home beneath Little David’s right wing.

  “Handle!”

  Burke removed the gaff with gentle hands. The O’Neal Red had been hurt in the second pitting. The wound in Icky’s chest no longer bled, but I held my thumb over the hole anyway, and made him stand quietly, facing him toward the wall where he couldn’t see his opponent.

  The third, fourth and fifth pittings were dance contests that could have been set to music. The two colorful gamecocks maneuvered, wheeled, sidestepped, feinted and leaped high into the air as they clashed. When one of them did manage to hang a heel, first one and then the other, the blow was punishing.

  Prior to the sixth pitting, I held Icky’s legs tight under his body to rest them, facing him toward the wall. I raised my eyes for a moment, and there sat Mary Elizabeth, not six feet away from me. I almost didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing a light blue coat with raglan sleeves, and she had a pastel-blue scarf over her blonde hair, tied beneath her chin. She sat in the second row—not in the seat I had reserved for her. Her skin was pale, and her expression was strained. As I smiled in recognition, Ed called for us to get ready, and I had to turn my back.

  “Pit!”

  For the first time in months I was second best in releasing my gamecock’s tail. Little David outflew my Blue and fanned him down. On his back, Icky shuffled his feet like a cat. Both birds fell over, pronged together with all four gaffs, like knitting needles stuck into two balls of colored yarn.

  “Handle!”

  It took Burke and me almost a full minute to disengage the heels. Both cocks were severely injured and my hands were red with blood as I sponged my battered bird down gingerly with cold water. During the short rest period I didn’t have time to exchange any love glances with my fiancée in the stands. Thirty seconds passed like magic.

  “Get ready… Pit!”

  Both gamecocks remained on their scores as we released them.

  “Count!” Burke ordered.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and one for Mr. Burke. Handle!” Ed said, looking up from his wristwatch.

  Both of us needed the additional thirty-second rest period. I sucked Icky’s comb to warm his head, held his beak open wide and spat into his open throat to refresh him. I was massaging his tired legs gently when Ed told us to get ready.

  “Pit!”

  Stiff-winged, the two cocks advanced toward each other from their scores and clashed wearily in the center. Too sick and too tired for aerial fighting, they buckled again and again with weakened fury. Little David fell over limply, breathing hard, and stayed there. Grateful for this respite, Icky also stopped fighting, standing quietly with his head down, bill touching the dirt.

  “The count is going on,” Ed announced, watching his wristwatch and the two cocks at the same time. At the silent count of twenty seconds, when neither bird had tried to fight, Ed ordered us to handle.

  I wanted to work feverishly, but I was unable to do the nursing needed to help my fighter. Bough nursing could put Icky out of the fight for good. I sponged him gently and let him rest. Icky had recovered considerably by himself from the twenty-second count.

  When the order to pit was given again, he crossed the dirt floor toward his enemy on shaky legs. Little David squatted on his score like a broody hen on eggs, with his beak wide open and his neck jerking in and out.

  Icky pecked savagely at the downed cock’s weaving head. An instant later, the maddened Little David bounced into the air as though driven by a compressed spring and came down on Icky’s back with blurring, hard-hitting heels. My cock was uncoupled by a spine blow, paralyzed, and unable to move from the neck down. Little David’s right one-and-a-quarter-inch heel had passed cleanly through Icky’s kidney and the point was down as far as the caeca. On the order to handle, I disengaged the gaff and returned to my score.

  I didn’t dare to sponge him. There was very little I could do. Water would make him bleed more rapidly than he was bleeding already. I held him loosely between my hands, pressing my fingers lightly into his hot body, afraid he would come apart in my hands. Fortunately, Little David was as badly injured as Icky. His last desperate attack had taken every ounce of energy he had left.

  After three futile counts of twenty, Ed Middleton ordered us to breast on the center score, one hand only beneath the bird.

  Which gamecock would peck first?

  Which gamecock would die first?

  It was an endurance test. Little David had been the last chicken to fight. If Icky died first, Little David would be declared the winner by virtue of throwing the last blow. On the third breast pitting, Icky stretched out his limp neck and pecked feebly. The order to handle was given. Again we pitted, and again Icky pecked, and this time he got a billhold on the other cock’s stubby dubbed comb. Little David didn’t feel or notice the billhold. Little David was dead. And so was Icky, his beak clamped to the Red’s comb to the last.

  “I’ll carry my bird out,” Jack Burke said.

  “You’re entitled to three more twenty-second counts,” Ed reminded him, going by the book.

  “What’s the use?” Burke said indifferently. “They’re both dead, now.”

  “Dead or not,” Ed said officially, “you’re entitled by the rules to three counts of twenty after the other cock pecks.”

  Without another word Jack Burke picked up his dead gamecock and left the pit. I picked up the Blue and held him to my chest. His long neck dangled limply over my left arm. My eyes were suddenly, irrationally, humid with tears.

  “That’s what I call a dead-game chicken, Frank!” Senator Foxhall called out from the judge’s box.

  I nodded blindly in his general direction and then turned my back on the old man to look for Mary Elizabeth. She wasn’t in her seat. I caught a glimpse of her blue topcoat as she hurried through the side entrance to the parking lot. I ran after her and caught up with her running figure just beyond the closed, shuttered box office.

  “Mary Elizabeth!” I said aloud. My voice sounded rusty, strangled, different, nothing at all like I remembered it.

  She stopped running, turned and faced me, her face like a mask. Her lips were as bloodless as her face.

  “You’v
e decided to talk again? Is that it? It’s too late now, Frank. And I know now that it was always too late for us. You aren’t the man I fell in love with, but you never were! If I’d seen you in the cockpit ten years ago, I would’ve known then. I didn’t watch those poor chickens fight, Frank, I watched your face. It was awful. No pity, no love, no understanding, nothing! Hate! You hate everything, yourself, me, the world, everybody!”

  She closed her eyes to halt the tears. A moment later she opened her purse and wiped her eyes with a small white handkerchief.

  “And I gave myself to you, Frank,” she said, as though she were speaking to herself. “I gave you everything I had to offer, everything, to a man who doesn’t even have a heart!”

  I didn’t know this woman. I had never seen her before. This was a Mary Elizabeth I had hidden from myself all these years.

  I dropped my dead Blue chicken to the ground, put my left heel on its neck, reached down, and jerked off his head with my right hand. I held the beaten, bloody, but never, never bowed head out to Mary Elizabeth in my palm. I had nothing else to say to the woman.

  Mary Elizabeth licked her pale lips. She took Icky’s head from my hand and wrapped it in her white handkerchief. Tucking the wrapped head away in her purse, she nodded.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much, Frank Mansfield. I’ll accept your gift. When I get home, I’ll preserve it in a jar of alcohol. I might even work out some kind of ritual, to remind myself what a damned fool I’ve been.”

  Her emerald eyes burned into mine for a moment.

  “My brother’s been right about you all along, but I had to drive up here to find out for myself. You’re everything he said you were, Frank Mansfield. A mean, selfish, sonofabitch!”

  Turning abruptly, she headed toward the rows of parked cars. After only a few steps, she broke into a wobbling, feminine run. I don’t know how long I stood there, looking after her retreating figure, even after she had passed from sight. A minute, two minutes, I don’t know.

  A voice blared over the outside speakers of the PA system: “MR. ROY WHIPPLE AND MR. FRANK MANSFIELD. REPORT TO THE JUDGE’S BOX, PLEASE!” The announcement was repeated twice, and I heard it, but I didn’t pay any attention to the amplified voice. I was immobilized by thought. I’ve grown up, I reflected. After thirty-three years, I was a mature individual. I had never needed Mary Elizabeth, and she had never needed me. Finally, it was all over between us—whatever it was we thought we had. My last tie with the past and Mansfield, Georgia, was broken. From now on I could look toward the future, and it had never been any brighter—

  He must have made some noise, but I didn’t hear Omar’s feet crunching on the gravel until he grabbed my arm.

  “For God’s sake, Frank,” Omar said excitedly. “What the hell are you standing out here for? Senator Foxhall’s awarding you the Cockfighter of the Year award! Let’s go inside, man! As your partner, I’m entitled to a little reflected glory, you know.”

  Now that he had my attention, he smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming through his black moustache. “Of course,” he shrugged, “Old Man Whipple won the tourney, but what do we care? Thanks to Icky’s victory, we’re loaded!” He patted his bulging jacket pockets. “We’ve got so damned much money, I’m almost afraid to count it.”

  Smiling, I gestured for him to go on ahead of me. Omar turned toward the entrance and trotted down the short hallway to the pit.

  When I reached the doorway, I paused. After the barbecue was over, I would ask Bernice to go to Puerto Rico with me for a month or so. If it got dull in Puerto Rico, we could swing on down to Caracas, and I might be able to pick up some Spanish Aces for next season. Omar could put our proven birds out on their Alabama walks without any assistance from me. And then, if I returned from South America by the middle of April, I would be back in plenty of time to start working with the spring stags.

  Across the pit, standing behind the referee’s table in front of the judge’s box, the two greatest game fowl men in the world were waiting for me. Senator Foxhall and Ed Middleton. To the left of the table, Peach Owen was holding the leather box that contained my award.

  Well, they could wait a little longer.

  As I neared her seat in the front row, Bernice smiled and said, “Congratulations, Frank!”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Oh!” she said, her eyes widening with astonishment. “You—you’ve got your voice back!”

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning at her expression, “and you’ll probably wish I hadn’t.”

  “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’ll find out that I’m quite the talker, Bernice, once I get wound up. How’d you like to go to Puerto Rico for a few weeks?”

  “Right now,” she said, “I’m so confused that the only answer I can think of on the spur of the moment is ‘Yes.’”

  I laughed and turned away, joy burbling out of my throat. How good to talk again, to laugh again!

  I jerked my jacket down in back and pushed my white hat back on my head at a careless angle. Then, squaring my shoulders, I crossed the empty pit to get my goddamned medal.